Chicago discussed as terrorist target, document says

By Richard A. Serrano | Tribune Washington BureauApril 26, 2011

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. military document posted on the internet Monday by WikiLeaks reports that former Chicago gang member Jose Padilla met with the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in 2002 and was ordered to find a terrorist target in Chicago.

Mohammed “directed Padilla to travel to Chicago, Illinois, rent an apartment, and initiate a natural gas explosion to cause the building to collapse,” said one document. Padilla also was told to explore “the feasibility of an operation to set fire to a hotel or gas station” in the United States.

The Obama administration, while noting that the postings by the WikiLeaks website include authentic U.S. documents, has criticized their release.The document states that Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda operative now in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, sent Padilla and Binyam Ahmed Mohammed to a Karachi, Pakistan, guesthouse for about one week. There they met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to “discuss future operations in the U.S.,” the document says.

Padilla was told to rent an apartment in Chicago, and Binyam Ahmed Mohammed was ordered to “join Padilla in Chicago on this mission,” according to the document.

Padilla flew to Chicago on May 8, 2002, and was immediately arrested at O’Hare International Airport. At the time, officials said he was suspected of coming to the U.S. to scout targets for a radioactive “dirty bomb” explosion.

A U.S. citizen born in Brooklyn and raised in Chicago, Padilla later was prosecuted not in the dirty bomb case but for conspiring to kill people overseas. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.

In February, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Padilla said he was illegally held and tortured while in U.S. custody. After his arrest, Padilla was declared an “enemy combatant” and held in a Navy jail in South Carolina for more than three years. His lawyers charge that he was waterboarded.